The International Bar Association (IBA) has accused Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe of conducting a reign of terror and said he should not be allowed to elude international justice.
In neighbouring countries, human rights groups protested the Zimbabwe Parliament’s approval of legislation seeking to curb the activities of NGOs there.
In some of the harshest criticism of Mugabe to date, the legal association said there is well-documented evidence that Mugabe’s government has committed murder, rape, abduction and enslavement.
Mark Ellis, the association’s executive director, also said there has been a ”woeful response to Mugabe’s crimes” by many African countries that he said have attempted to prop up Mugabe’s government and deflect criticism of its human rights record.
Mugabe’s spokesperson George Charamba and Information Minister Jonathan Moyo were away from their offices and could not be reached for comment. Their offices declined to make any other officials available to speak.
In the past, Mugabe and his government have dismissed all such criticism as part of a campaign by Western governments, particularly Britain and the United States, to undermine Zimbabwe, which he has led since independence from Britain in 1980.
The criticism of his regime was in a six-page IBA supplement on the country’s political and economic crisis published on Friday in the Mail & Guardian and Zimbabwe’s weekend Independent newspapers. The Mugabe government shut down Zimbabwe’s only independent daily in defiance of court orders.
The London-based IBA includes 16 000 lawyers and more than 190 bar associations and law societies from every continent. Its Human Rights Institute works to preserve the independence of the judiciary.
”Zimbabwe’s descent into this unimaginable chaos is the result of the perverse policies of its President, Robert Mugabe,” Ellis said in the lead article.
”His systematic oppression of an increasingly impoverished people and his government’s widespread policy of subverting the press, the rule of law and human rights are a desperate and brutal attempt to retain political power at all costs.”
Ellis said other inhumane acts by Mugabe’s government include the systematic policy of denying food aid to anyone who is not a member of his ruling Zanu-PF party.
”Robert Mugabe’s actions … are also gross violations of international humanitarian law, and he should be held accountable for his reign of terror,” said Ellis.
Even though Zimbabwe has not ratified the International Criminal Court, Ellis said a post-Mugabe government could request an investigation and indictment against him.
”If Mugabe can manipulate and evade domestic and regional justice, he should not be able to elude international justice,” Ellis wrote.
Richard Goldstone, a retired South African Constitutional Court justice and United Nations special prosecutor for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, said that unfortunately Western criticism of state-sponsored violence and torture is seen as an anti-African campaign.
”I am disappointed that there hasn’t been more action and louder voices in Africa condemning the situations in Zimbabwe,” Goldstone said in an interview for the supplement.
Ellis criticised the African group at the UN, led by South Africa, for blocking resolutions that deplored Zimbabwe’s human rights record.
Zimbabwe’s main opposition Movement for Democratic Change said in its own report on Friday that seven of its members of Parliament, 53 of its officials and hundreds of its activists have been victims of arbitrary arrest, intimidation, beatings or torture in the past year.
On Thursday, Zimbabwe’s Parliament, dominated by the ruling party, passed a Bill that effectively bans all foreign-funded human rights and advocacy groups. Mugabe has yet to sign the Bill into law.
London-based Amnesty International and other groups staged demonstrations outside Zimbabwe’s embassies in neighbouring countries on Friday to protest the Bill.
In South Africa, more than 100 demonstrators gathered outside the Zimbabwe High Commission in Pretoria. Smaller demonstrations were held in Zambia and Malawi. — Sapa-AP